Mercules: The Underwater Hercules: A Stripperiffic Adventure
by Patbert
Summary: Mercules discovers that he can solve all of Earth's problems by stripping, but it could also bring about the end of the world.


"You really need to work on your flip turns!" Coach Doug yelled to me. "Your strokework is good enough for now, but you're losing a lot of time on your turns."

"Ok, Coach. I'll try." I told him, out of breath. Swim team was hard. I had been giving everything I had, the whole season, but even though I like it, swimming is hard, and some other people are really good at it. I pushed off the wall and started another practice lap. I didn't hear it, but as I was underwater, the bell rang. I go and do my best flip turn of the day, and get back to where I started. Looking around, I see that the whole place is empty. Looking at the clock, I realized why. I should be a detective. I got out of the pool, and dried off as quickly as I could.

My next class was Home Economics. Yeah, yeah. I signed up for Home Economics. People said there'd be girls there. Too bad word got around, and they had to make a second session. Mine's full of guys that had the same idea as me. Whatever. I'm not too likely to miss something fun, but being late is being was going to be the lesson on dust management spells. Oh, that's right. I suppose I should tell you that I go to Ling Soo High School, a school for magicians.

My name's Mervin Q. Lee. My dad, Hardy, had been a travelling magician for 7 years when he found out that magic was actually real. Once he did, his performances improved by leaps and bounds, attracting his wife, Mary. He taught Mary some of the tricks of the trade, and she became his assistant when he needed her, but she never left her true passion, accounting. They made friends in the magician's circle, and sent me to Ling Soo High School so I could learn the family business.

I wasn't terribly excited about the prospect of being a stage magician in one of the least magic-friendly economies in decades. But we play the hand we're dealt. I always wanted to be a competitive swimmer, but I guess having magic as a tool would be more helpful than not.

I was almost to class when I snapped out of my daydream about the past. I looked around again, and found myself surrounded by my 3 least favorite people; Chuck, Brandon, and Horace. Nobody else really saw them as the class bullies, but nobody else got punched by them and thrown into lockers several times a week either.

"What's up, guys?" I said. I knew exactly what was up.

"It's your week to be the locker inspector!" Brandon said. I mouthed the words along with him, knowing exactly what he was going to say. It's always my week to be locker inspector. These boys are terrible at scheduling.

Brandon punched me in the guts, and Chuck pushed me forward from behind as I doubled over. I couldn't get the air to say anything about my guts, so I just grunted at my shoes. Horace lifted me up, and hung me up by my belt in my own locker.

I would have loved to be bigger. Maybe I could stand up for myself better, but at least I wouldn't fit in the locker so well. I'm smaller than average, but it was still impressive that Horace could lift me at all.

I guess I've always been a little jealous of Horace. His name was dumb too, but he had somehow overcome that, and become one of the popular kids. Punk.

From inside the locker, I could hear their laughter fade as they walked down the hall. When they were gone, I pushed up on the sides of the locker, unhooked myself, and let myself out.

Now officially late, I walked to my class.

"The usual reason?" asked Mr. Kanamiks.

"The usual." I told him.

Mr. Kanamiks taught a dumb subject, but he'd always been nice to me. He had been picked on a lot, himself, when he was a kid because of his own name, Homer. He had heard every joke about The Iliad that there was. Kids and their old-timey Greek books.

In Home Economics, we were learning a spell to ionize objects. This would give them a mild electric charge, which would make them attract dust. This made it child's play to then simply wipe off with a damp rag. I'm not really a dust man myself, so this was a spell I could get behind. I had a tough time getting it to work. I guess I was distracted by my sore guts.

After class, I headed to my favorite class of all, lunch. I brought my own lunch, so I headed up to the chemistry lab. Nobody ever went there unless they were in class. I still wanted to get this dust spell working, and I could use the solitude.

I sat down at one of the lab tables, and started to chow down. As I said, lunch is my favorite. When I was done, it was time to practice. I needed something to ionize. There were plenty of metal things to choose from, but most of them held vials, beakers, and jugs of chemicals. I decided to use one of the stools that sat at the tables. I put the stool on the table, threw my cape over it, said "Ta-da!", and then removed it.

It didn't really look like it was working, so I put my face up close to it. No dust. I tried again.

"Ta-da!", I said, more loudly this time. I ran my finger along the stool's leg. Still no dust. Ok. Time to go nuts.

I yelled "TA-DA!" at the top of my lungs, with a very dramatic flourish of my cape. Electricity arced from every outlet and light fixture in the room to the stool. Uh oh. I got thrown back hard into a rack of chemicals. The vials, beakers, and even the jugs shattered, and liquid of all colors flew everywhere. The electricity wasn't stopping, and now it was arcing to me too.

All I could see was bright white light as I was shocked again and again. My screams echoed through the whole floor of the school. Probably, anyway. It's an echoey place. Finally, the breakers tripped, and the whole school went dark.

I fell to the floor, gasping for breath. Hard to breathe when you're being electrocuted. The pain and numbness caused by the electricity was gone, but I still felt strange. My skin tingled and my muscles twitched.

I felt… good.

I picked myself off the floor, still kind of in shock. Heh. I staggered over to the door. I pushed it open, and it broke into splinters. Oh, right. It's a pull door.

Wait.

I looked down at my hands. They looked bigger. My arms and legs were bigger too, and they looked further away from the floor than usual.

I touched my head, and rather than my normal close cut haircut, I felt luxurious locks of wavy golden hair.

So this is what puberty feels like.


End file.
